Hardship and the "law" - encourage the conversation of sellers and attorneys

Sometimes the stories are just plain sad ... other stories seem out-of-touch ... still others just don't ring true ... and yet others raise the "I don't believe this" monitor to the top of the scale.  What are these stories ... these are the hardships of the short sale seller.

The loss of jobs, the reduction of income, the drastic changes in personal circumstances ... all of these are in the bounds of expected hardships.  Our job is not to assess the validity of the hardship ... nor do we rate them on a scale of one-to-ten in being sympathetic to the sellers' lender.  With as much professional detachment as possible, we prepare the submission package, market the property, negotiate the initial offer and submit to the seller's lender.  BUT every now and then ....

... Comes the whopper story!  We're not talking here about "believable" but rather the circumstances that resulted in the hardship.  When those circumstances don't fall in the plain vanilla category ... remember to ask "have you talked with your attorney about this?"  If the seller responds with anything other than "yes and the attorney said ...."  - please consider stopping everything you are doing and going to do, until AFTER that conversation takes place.  As licensed real estate professionals, we have neither the right nor the ability to offer legal opinions.  BUT we can usually tell when one is needed. 

Unless we have been sidelined in a cave somewhere ... we all pretty much know about the legal issues surrounding the "bankers" far and wide in this housing tangle.  It is not a far leap to consider that short sale transactions, listings and contracts might not be far behind.  We have been schooled since day one ... have your clients consult other professionals in matters of law and accounting!  The overriding concern ... is telling them that they should consult with other professionals .... and then keeping on with business as usual ... enough insulation to demonstrate that we have acted in our clients' best interest? OR, would we and the prospective client be better served when those other professionals have assessed the level of risk the client may be facing and we are all now working on the same page?